Emoji convey a lot using very little, and now Yelp has tapped into this to speed up its searches. No, the results don't come in any faster. Rather, instead of typing out a word as long as "hamburger," just insert a picture of one. Want to hit up a bar? Head to the emoji section of your keyboard and drop in a frosty mug. Yelp will know what to do.

Yelp doesn't just handle food, and the app is more than happy to provide the addresses for nearby churches, banks, and hotels. Searching for lipstick will bring up a list of cosmetic stores, whereas inserting a tie will reveal local areas to buy a nice suit. The app can even handle a fair degree of nuance. Searching for a bikini will bring back lists of locations to buy swimwear, provide places to get waxed, make laser skincare recommendations, or point you to the local bikini-themed bar.

Usefulness aside, some results are just plain funny, so don't be conservative with the emoji you experiment with. Go ahead, try searching for poop.

The functionality works in the current version of Yelp, which you can get via the widget below.

Comments

How'd you get all of those in Google Keyboard? I'm running Play Store version and have gone into settings and installed "Emoji for English words". If I long press Return, I only get this: http://i.imgur.com/kp2uQlu.png

These are the emojis that come up on my Note 3 with KitKat. Why are they iOS?

Kcls

Not the emoji in the comment a few above, the emoji in the article. They are the iOS emojis; see how they're all 3D with gradients and such? That's iOS style emoji. All Android emoji are completely flat in design.

Well they're based on a font. Whichever font the developer of the keyboard chooses is up to them, but there are (afaik) only 2 emoji fonts: Android's and iOS's. Android emoji are all flat, like in my screenshots above, while iOS emoji are all more "3d" in nature, like the screenshots in the article.

Matthew Fry

This is what mine look like. They are similar to Artem's but different...

ddpacino

Wonder if Apple will jock Android's to go with the 'flat' look in iOS8.

darkdude1

It'd take me longer to find the emjoi than to just type it...Cool idea though I guess.